Stone, due to its rich colors, different varieties, elegant appearance, durability and other characteristics, is widely used as outdoor and indoor decoration material for all types of buildings. Synthetic materials are manufactured for all kinds of applications for not only their beautiful appearance and durability, but also their green and environmental-friendly characteristics. They are now very popular materials in the construction industry.
Due to the physical properties of stone, connecting or coupling the cladding panels with the main body of the building adds a certain degree of difficulty. In the traditional “wet adhesive” attaching method, such as using mortar or adhesive, the cladding panels in direct contact with the concrete block of building. It may seriously affect the decorative function and create many problems, even some safety issues. As comparing to the “wet adhesive” attaching method, some currently used fixing methods (dry-hanging methods) may overcome some of the above mentioned shortcomings by installing the cladding panels indirectly onto concrete surface of the building, such as through dowel pin anchor, Kerf anchor, undercut fastener (or back bolting) connection and so on. But these hanging processes also have their own deficiencies. For example, these processes need holes to be manually drilled or slots to be manually cut by workers on the construction site. Adhesive for fixing anchor on cladding panel is also applied on site. These processes require longer construction time, more operations and highly skilled workers, such as experienced masons. At the same time, there may be also negative impact on construction quality by climate or environmental factors, such as in cold winter time. Furthermore, certain facilities and equipment may be required to create the features on cladding panel, and a certain extent of environment pollution is inevitable. Among these commonly used installation methods, undercut fastener (or back bolting) connection may be an improvement over dowel pin and kerf anchors. For example, the main process is completed within the fabrication shop instead of on site, but its structure designed to take external forces carries a risk in creating relatively high stress in the cladding material. As a consequence, the method of undercut fastener connection still has some drawbacks, such as limitations imposed on the thickness of cladding material and the overall size of panel.
Accordingly there exists a need for improved methods and systems for cladding.